The problem
of restoring it was quite beyond his abilities. He finally took the
savings of two summers' "blueberry money" and walked sixteen miles to
the nearest town, where he bought a book called "The Practical
Violinist." The supplement proved to be a mine of wealth. Even the
headings appealed to his imagination and intoxicated him with their
suggestions--On Scraping, Splitting, and Repairing Violins, Violin
Players, Great Violinists, Solo Playing, &c.; and at the very end a
Treatise on the Construction, Preservation, Repair, and Improvement
of the Violin, by Jacob Augustus Friedheim, Instrument Maker to the
Court of the Archduke of Weimar.
There was a good deal of moral advice in the preface that sadly
puzzled the boy, who was always in a condition of chronic amazement
at the village disapprobation of his favourite fiddle. That the
violin did not in some way receive the confidence enjoyed by other
musical instruments, he perceived from various paragraphs written by
the worthy author of "The Practical Violinist," as for example:
"Some very excellent Christian people hold a strong prejudice against
the violin because they have always known it associated with dancing
and dissipation. Let it be understood that your violin is
'converted,' and such an objection will no longer lie against it . .
. Many delightful hours may be enjoyed by a young man, if he has
obtained a respectable knowledge of his instrument, who otherwise
would find the time hang heavy on his hands; or, for want of some
better amusement, would frequent the dangerous and destructive paths
of vice and be ruined for ever.
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